Or at least make sure I didn’t get caught! 
Exactly. It’s hard for me to believe that so many people are reacting with such outrage because a college student smoked some pot. What he really needs to learn from this experience is don’t get caught, dumbass!
Really? I missed the outrage. I see some people advocating making sure he knows the legal, financial, social and familial consequences of his actions, but there’s hardly a whiff of outrage that I can detect. For my own part, I’d have given the same exact responses were he spending all his cash on ice cream sundaes instead of textbooks or groceries.
Maybe my outrageOmeter is out of whack after so many political threads lately…
You don’t mention this but … as well as paying for everything, do you also do everything? Does he cook meals? do laundry? help clean the house? mow the lawns? If he’s sharing the appropriate chore load in the house I’d be willing to grant him “adult” status - otherwise, IMO he’s still a kid, and probably needs some ramping up in the responsibility stakes.
And … I’m not really seeing this discussed in the thread so far, but … you found out about this from the newspaper? I am not, not at ALL an easily angered person, but if I found out that a family member living in the same house as me had been busted by the police and had a court date and said not one word about it…? Major, major unhappiness time. Never mind the pot smoking.
No, I don’t do much for him at all. He is expected to clean up after himself and keep his room in reasonable shape. He does his own laundry, takes out the trash, mows the lawn when asked (for some reason my husband doesn’t want to just assign this to him). If I make dinner he’s welcome to show up for it, but I certainly don’t prepare anything specifically for him. We honestly don’t see a lot of him, since he’s either at class, at work, or with his friends.
As for the newspaper thing, yeah, we were not happy about finding out about it like that. He had been told it wouldn’t be in the paper, so he thought we just wouldn’t find out. He’s been pushing for us to allow him to move out to an apartment, so he didn’t want this to ruin his chances for that. Now there’s no way we’ll pay rent for him, especially since he wants to move in with one of the boys involved in the incident.
So how do you prohibit an 18-year old from moving out if he wants to?
Oh. Perhaps “allow” mayn’t be the optimum word here… :rolleyes:
Oh, he’s welcome to move out if he wants, but he can’t afford it. He needs our support in order to do it. It will probably happen next year, with him paying for utilities and food.
Well he’s your son, you know him, you know what he’ll respond to, and you know whether he’s a “good kid” who was careless enough to get caught doing what many kids do, or whether he’s headed down the Wrong Path and associating with * Bad Influences*. I think the worst thing my Mum could’ve done to me at that age was let me know she was dissapointed in me. Whether I admitted it at the time or not, her approval was, and still is, very important to me.
I disagree with the concept of him moving into an apartment and you paying his rent. If he’s big enough to live on his own, he’s big enough to pay for it. I think it’s pretty normal for kids heading out on their own for the first time to make some financial mistakes, but they need to make these mistakes, and it’s probably best they do it when they’re 18 than when they’re 24.
I was wondering when someone would kick the elephant in the room…I think it says a lot about the entire situation that he would get busted, have to make bail (maybe) and then go to court, all under the household radar.
Something like this would have me asking, what else is going on that is under the radar? I’ll bet a nickle this isn’t the only thing.
Phall0106, mother of three–one teen and two in their 20’s.
Round here, that discussion would have gone:
Kid: Mom, I wanna move out.
Me: Wow, really? Where to?
Kid: Well, me and Robbie were going to get an apartment. Only thing is, I can’t afford it.
Me: Ah, so you’ll be staying then.
I have every sympathy for you, WVmom, so I hope you don’t feel too picked on. I think you’ll find some good advice here.
The ticket part, he dealt with on his own - but I’d be mighty pissed at his trying to hide it from me. Not “me his Mom,” but directly “me his roommate.”
For the grounding, add me to the “hell no” chorus, but I’d ask him to be upfront with me when he has problems. That doesn’t mean he needs to tell me every time he gets a hangnail, but something like a court appearance is sliiiiightly bigger than a hangnail.
He should be contributing something toward the common piggibank, not because you can’t pay for his schooling (in Spain the usual thing is for parents to pay for it) but because that’s what adults who can, do.
It wasn’t an arrest, it was a citation. He was never taken in, just handed a ticket and sent on his way. He went to court between classes, so it wasn’t difficult for him to hide (until it hit the papers!). The other kid’s parents found out the same way. There was a third kid, and as far as I know his parents still don’t know.
I’m sure there are other things going on that I don’t know about, but I’m also sure that there are things going on with about 99% of high school and college age kids that their parents also don’t know about. It’s a great age for hiding things from your parents; I know that I did. I also smoked pot back then; I just didn’t get caught.
If you haven’t already, I would make that explicit to him after this little incident. I’d phrase it not as “We’ll kick you out because we think pot smoking is bad,” but as “We will not allow you to put the rest of the family at risk because of your illegal activities. When you have your own apartment with your own name on the lease, you’re free to engage in whatever activities you choose.”
Definitely not always true. Libraries don’t always have the books your classes are using. In fact, in my college experience, it wasn’t even close to always true. And if it was, there were often kids doing the same thing, and taking out the books that you needed for class. Online you can often find editions for cheap, but depending on the text they might be an outdated edition. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially for more recent editions.
I would tell him that his room will now be subject to a search a any time, because I don’t want his stash in the house.
Well, actually, it was me, I’d try it and see if it was any better or cheaper than what I got.
I don’t see a problem with paying for his expenses while he’s in school. If the parents can afford it, the school won’t make the same loans and grants available to a student that they will to kids whose parents can’t afford it. The kid will wind up either a) putting work before class and taking longer to graduate or b) taking out expensive loans/credit card debt or c) both a and b. Some people have to finance school that way, but if parents and kids can work together as a team to avoid those things, the outcome is usually better.
I do think you should hold him over a cliff and point toward the abyss of self-sufficiency you will push him into for a second offense. I also think at least one full year of living at home trouble-free would be required before subsidizing him moving into an apartment. Living in an apartment while going to a local school is a pretty big luxury. It’s making an unnecessary rent payment every month. You may want to consider whether that really is a luxury you want to treat him to. I’d definitely want to see at least one year of trouble-free performance with good grades before I even considered it.
I have the perfect life lesson/punishment. You continue to pay for his clothes, but you get to choose them and take him shopping to get them. Piper, meet tune.
Speaking of clothes, he bought himself a new tshirt yesterday. It says “Doing drugs is wiggedy wack!” :dubious:
On more than one occasion, we’ve sat our kids down and said, “Things have been going along like this for some time, but we’re not pleased with how they are going. So we’re thinking about making some changes. While we want your input, your mom and I will ultimately be deciding one what rules apply.”
And one a couple of occasions when we took a specific stand, after explaining our reasons and intentions, if a kid still disagrees, we have said, *"Well, those are the rules we’re going to work with for now. We’ll see how things go, and can certainly modify them at any time with good reasons. Your choices are to either:
-continue accepting whatever assistance we say we will continue giving you, and follow the rules AND be a pleasant and helpful person around the house
- OR -
-you can move out and be on your own. Make all of your rules, and pay all of your bills. We think you would be astoundingly stupid if you were to choose that, but you certainly are free to do so."*
Hell, being a parent you’re pretty much making things up as you go along. So we have no problem telling our kids when our perception of things has changed, or circumstances have changed, and just about any aspect of our household can be tweaked. As long as the kids are pleasant, help out, and don’t fuck up we will be pretty damned good to live with. But drop the ball on any of those counts, and they’re likely to find out how swell they had it when they have to try going without! 
And I can imagine telling him to lose the shirt with the drug reference. I’m a huge fan of legalization. But getting busted for pot is not a joke.
Seems to me that he’s living in NerfWorld at the moment, with most of the privileges of being an adult but none of the reponsibilities: I doubt he bought the shirt to piss you off, but he’s just not getting that in the real world his actions have consequences, and not just for himself. I’d be pretty pissed off to discover that after a kid of mine had been busted for drugs, I was paying for clothes that flaunted that fact: it’s pretty bloody thoughtless.
I’d add my vote to the consensus that you need to start imposing some responsibilties on him, and financial ones would be a good place to start: if he’s earning something, he can at least take some responsibility for himself by kicking in for food or board. I started working full-time at 16 while I was still living at home, and as soon as I was earning I was required to contribute to the household and follow its rules. Provided a great incentive to my independence, I can tell you, when at age 18 I figured that for a little more than what I was paying at home I could move out and set my own rules.